The Chemical Reaction

by Fiona Erskine

  We must make sacrifices, yes. But do we have to sacrifice our children?

  After Mimi went to bed, Yun made the call. Mico was the only one who could help her now.

  PART III

  OCTOBER

  A village five miles south of Middlesbrough, England

  Frank kept half an eye on the weather as he drove to the church. Autumn in Teesside meant grey skies and rain. Just like winter, spring and summer. October rain might be slightly warmer than January rain, but the seasons in the north-east of England were barely distinguishable.

  Today, just to confound him, the afternoon was turning out crisp and bright, the silver weathervane at the top of the spire shimmering in the sun.

  A perfect day for a funeral.

  Catch up with old friends, the doctor said. A funeral was the ideal place to start socialising again, to take one small step towards complete recovery.

  Frank reversed into a tight space next to the village green. A little stream ran beside the high street, corralled into a steep-sided canal fringed with willow trees. Pretty village. You had to say that for the North. Outside the ghastly industrial towns there were plenty of attractive places. Although, strictly speaking, this one was in North Yorkshire. A different class of place. If he’d known he’d be in the Zagrovyl job this long, he might have considered buying a house out here, in a hamlet like this. You could get a lot of living space for your money compared to Sussex. A thought for the future. For now, the serviced apartment in Eaglescliffe was more convenient for a single man. An eligible bachelor on his way to an interesting date.

  He’d agreed to play the organ as a favour to the family – well, as a favour to Sophie, who had some confused idea that Frank and her father had been friends. Business acquaintances, yes, but apart from money they had little in common. Charles Clark was obsessed with batteries. All he could talk about. Boring as hell. Fortunately, he’d buggered off to China to set up a factory there. Frank had barely noticed his absence. And then the old man got ill and came home to die. It had all happened fast. At least he hadn’t lingered.

  Frank was here to keep an eye on his investment. Apparently, Charles had left everything to his daughter, Sophie. Rich, easy on the eye and grieving. A winning combination.

  He twisted to grab his folder of sheet music from the back seat and swore at the brief pain in his lower back. He’d chosen the programme to impress. Sophie had reeled off a list of music her father loved. Simon and Garfunkel, Lloyd Webber, the Carpenters. Charles had execrable taste. Frank had substituted a more appropriate programme. One that showed off the full range of the glorious instrument. And his skill. You couldn’t go wrong with J. S. Bach.

  He ambled up the path to the vicarage, taking a shortcut across the lawn and onto the terrace so he could peer through the french windows of the grand Victorian rectory, but the shutters were closed. He walked away from the house, past a tidy vegetable patch, avoiding the beehives buzzing with activity, and skirted an orchard heavy with fruit.

  The church door opened on to rows of empty pews. At least an hour before anyone else arrived. He climbed up to the organ loft and adjusted the seat with mounting irritation. Whoever had been performing here before was a fucking midget.

  His phone pinged, amplified and echoed by the ancient stone walls. He blinked at the screen, too bright for the soft light of the chapel. Aha! So, she was on her way back, was she? Jaqueline Silver. The murdering engineer who almost cost him his job, his health and his sanity. He read her brief message and a surge of anger swept over him. The scar on his left leg began to throb, and the ringing in his bad ear turned to white noise.

  Frank switched off his phone and took two tablets. The doctor told him to count to one hundred, but he preferred to use music to manage the madness.

  A chorale prelude from Orgelbüchlein, J. S. Bach’s Little Organ Book, helped his breathing return to normal. ‘Christum wir sollen loben schon’, the tempo in inverse proportion to his heart rate as the muscle memory in his fingers took over and moved the melody through visceral harmonisation to a glorious final chord.

  He set up the sheet music for the funeral and cracked his knuckles. A fine instrument.

  With an even finer organist.

  Ljubljana, Slovenia

  The plane began its descent, crossing the invisible border between Austria and Slovenia. It banked on approach to Ljubljana, the broad fertile valley of the river Sava a riot of autumn colour: russet, crimson, amber, copper and gold.

  Jaq gazed out of the window at Mount Triglav, the rocky peak sparkling in the sunshine, white with the first snow of the season. Her thighs and calves tightened involuntarily. Muscle memory: only a few months ago she had been skiing down the high slopes.

  This visit was time-constrained – meet with her lawyer, sign some court documents at the police station, ensure her record with Interpol was wiped clean, collect her passport and possessions and say goodbye to Slovenia.

  And to everything that might have been. And could never be.

  In a cramped office, behind tinted windows, the immigration official frowned at the document before scrutinising the face of the woman in front of him.

  ‘You are Dr Jaqueline Silver?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Any other identification documents?’

  ‘No.’ Her Portuguese passport lay at the bottom of the Black Sea. This piece of paper was the best the consular official in Sofia, Bulgaria had been able to manage: a one-way warrant to Slovenia to collect her British passport, currently in a police safe in Ljubljana.

  ‘You’re married?’

  Separated, awaiting divorce, but that was more information than she was willing to share. What business was it of this bureaucrat? Legally speaking, she was still married to Gregor Coutant. Morally speaking she had a step-granddaughter she was anxious to meet. OK, make it simple.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is your husband meeting you?’

  ‘No.’

  He looked up, narrowing his eyes.

  ‘And your luggage?’

  She handed him the letter from the UN office. ‘I was shipwrecked.’

  He read the letter carefully, his eyes slowly widening. ‘You OK?’

  ‘I’ll survive.’

  He stamped the document and waved for her to go. ‘Good luck.’

  Brooding, lost in memories, she almost walked straight past the slim, fair-haired policeman.

  ‘Dr Silver.’

  She stopped and held out a hand.

  ‘Detective Y’Ispe.’

  It was good to see him again. Will-O’-the-Wisp, the Slovenian police detective who had believed in her innocence long after everyone else had decided she was guilty. The man who had carried on investigating while others tried to silence her.

  ‘Safe flight?’

  Strange question. The safest thing she had done in the last six months was to take an airplane from one European airport to another. Only twenty-three fatalities among 2.4 billion passenger flights last year. Safer than a trip by train or a journey in a car, orders of magnitude safer than a spin on a motorbike on forbidden roads, a jump from a crashing helicopter or a dive from a capsizing yacht in the Black Sea.

  ‘Fine.’

  Why was he here, at the airport? She hadn’t told him the exact arrival time, offering only a window of dates for a return to Ljubljana.

  ‘Your lawyer told me which flight you were on.’

  Could everyone read her thoughts as well as Will-O’-the-Wisp? Or was it his profession that gave him special insight? He was good at his job. And looking much more relaxed than last time they met.

  ‘He’ll meet us at the station.’

  Outside the small airport, a police car idled: stripes of white, red and blue and a coat of arms with three mountain peaks and three stars – the Slovenian flag. Will-O’-the-Wisp opened the back door for her before getting into the front next to the uniformed driver. They drove into the old town through narrow streets, bouncing over cobbles, past brightly pa
inted houses: salmon pink, lime green and sunflower yellow under terracotta tiles. Most of her time in Ljubljana had been spent behind prison bars. People had conspired to keep her there.

  Her court-appointed Slovenian lawyer was waiting for her in an interview room. A man who stank of ketosis – the giveaway smell of the committed alcoholic. He looked as if he had slept under his usual hedge. Perhaps his shaking hands could not be trusted with a razor or hairbrush. Rumple Stubble the Useless.

  Not quite so useless, as it transpired. He’d done a thorough job. The documents he had prepared exonerated her completely; the consolidated statement was accurate and concise. All charges in Slovenia – professional misconduct, breaking bail, evading capture, contempt of court, manslaughter and murder – had been dropped.

  Once the paperwork was complete, a police constable brought out the things she had left behind. Before her arrest, she’d been employed as an explosives expert, setting off controlled avalanches to keep the slopes safe for skiing and snowboarding. There wasn’t much to show for her season at Snow Science: a suitcase of clothes, a carton of books and CDs, a crate with her stereo, assorted kitchen items and a sealed padded envelope marked private.

  She unzipped the suitcase and recoiled at the smell of mildew. Her clothes were neatly folded: ski jacket, salopettes, thermal vests and long johns, coat, hat, gloves, colourful pashmina scarf, a party dress, assorted underwear, a business trouser suit, several blouses, T-shirts, sweaters, a pair of faded jeans, gym kit, swimming costume, knee-length leather boots, running shoes and climbing boots. The whole case stank. Cladosporium, the microscopic fungus with its invisible branching mitospores had permeated everything, feeding on moist fibres and producing volatile organics like trichloroanisole, detectable to the human nose at parts per trillion.

  She removed the Shetland hat and sniffed it; the familiar scent of peat fires and wet sheep persisted, the natural antimicrobials in the lanolin having protected it. Perhaps she should go back to Sullom Voe. Even in winter, the outer isles had a magic that was hard to resist. Despite the short days and long nights, the gale-force winds and angry seas, it was a place she would happily return to.

  Hat retrieved, everything else was replaceable. Best to start afresh. She zipped the suitcase back up and placed it on the floor.

  The books and CDs were in better shape. She flicked through, picking out a few to keep – those with memories attached, such as Perry’s Chemical Engineers’ Handbook (sixth edition) and Parliament’s Mothership Connection (remastered). The rest could go to charity, along with the old stereo and all the kitchen equipment except the Bialetti Dama, the stove-top espresso maker that Johan had given her.

  She left the padded envelope to last. Her peripatetic childhood meant that she had been able to keep only a few things that she really valued, and this package held most of them.

  She opened it and explored the contents with her fingers. The Portuguese ceramic tile was intact, and everything else safely wrapped.

  A green marble rolled out; she caught it and held it up to the light.

  The first thing Jaq remembered, really remembered, was the crocodile in the garden. His unblinking green eye, a vertical slit of black in a circle of jade shot through with golden threads, pulled her in. Close up, she could see the knobbly reptilian skin, the rows of yellow teeth, the nostrils that flared, and was repulsed and fascinated in equal measure.

  She’d been playing outside the family home in Luanda, Angola. Her brother had climbed a tree, but she was too small to reach the first branch and was bored with trying. Glimpsing movement and a flash of green at the bottom of the slope, she’d run off to investigate. It wasn’t as if she was unaware of the danger – they’d been warned many times – but crocodiles didn’t usually venture so far from the river.

  Curiosity drove her tottering down the bank; she couldn’t have been more than three or four years old. The strange animal in the long grass was smiling at her, so she smiled back. She remembered wanting to touch its skin, to see if it was warm or cold, rough or smooth, wet or dry. The crocodile moved fast, but Sam moved faster.

  He saved her life.

  Which was more than she’d done for him.

  Lock it down. Lock it in. She wrapped the marble in its square of bubble wrap, put it back in the envelope, sealed it and pushed it into her bag.

  Will-O’-the-Wisp was waiting for her.

  ‘Everything in order?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. I’ve taken what I need.’ She patted her bag, bulkier than before. ‘Can you dispose of the rest?’

  He peered into the room behind her. ‘Sure.’

  ‘My passport?’

  He opened a drawer and took out a brown folder. Extracting her passport, a slightly battered booklet in burgundy and gold, he handed it over. She checked it and then put it in her bag.

  ‘Will I be OK to travel?’

  ‘Interpol case closed,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks for everything.’ She stood and held out her hand.

  ‘Perhaps you need a ride to Kranjskabel?’

  He’d assumed she would return to Karel, her former lover. The pang of regret twisted her stomach. He was mistaken there, but she would play along.

  ‘It’s OK. I can take the bus.’

  And she could. But she wouldn’t. She had moved on. She had everything she came for: her passport, the personal stuff that mattered. What she didn’t need now were complications. An early night, and then she was on the next plane to England.

  Will-O’-the-Wisp didn’t insist.

  ‘I guess it’s goodbye, Jaq.’ He held out a hand. ‘Until you stumble across some more criminal masterminds in my backyard.’

  ‘Always happy to help.’ She shook his hand.

  ‘Try and stay clear of explosions.’

  She smiled. ‘I’ll make it my New Year’s resolution.’

  A sea of travellers washed through Manchester airport, ebbing and flowing like the tide. Johan was waiting in Arrivals. She tried, and failed, to hide her delight.

  ‘Sorry, it’s only me.’ His arms were strong, and his chest felt reassuringly solid as he pulled her into a warm embrace. She pulled away first.

  ‘Emma wanted to come,’ he said. ‘But someone had to stay with the kids.’

  ‘I’m so glad to see you.’ And she was. Indecently glad.

  They walked towards the exit.

  ‘How’s Giovanni?’

  It was Johan who had suggested his Italian climbing buddy as skipper for her last mission.

  ‘He’ll live.’ She frowned. The Bulgarian hospital had not been the most comfortable, but the orthopaedic surgeon knew what he was doing. ‘Broken arm reset.’ She’d stayed with her increasingly irascible skipper – a sure sign he was on the mend – until the doctors confirmed the success of the operation, and then skedaddled a few hours before Lucia arrived to fetch him home. Giovanni’s fiancée sounded lovely on the phone; kinder to leave them alone.

  Talking of kindness, maybe she should head straight back to her flat.

  ‘You didn’t have to come and meet me. I can get the train to Yarm.’

  ‘I’m driving you to the farmhouse.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Lake Coniston was one of her favourite places in the whole world, but it was Johan and Emma’s family home.

  ‘Emma’s strict instructions.’

  Jaq smiled. Emma was a true friend. One she didn’t deserve.

  ‘Just for tonight then.’

  ‘Our home is your home.’ He draped an arm around her shoulders and drew her closer as they walked. ‘You stay as long as you want.’

  If only it were that simple.

  Charles de Gaulle airport, Paris, France

  Frank slammed his case onto the conveyor. Taking a flight was another step back to normal life. It was proving more taxing than he’d bargained for: insufferable Paris.

  It was fuckwit day at airport security. An entertaining day out for delinquents with nothing better to do than stare at the walls of whatever
asylum they normally inhabited, but intolerable for anyone wishing to travel. The group of construction workers in front of him were arguing over the bottles of brandy and eau de toilette in their hand luggage. The combination of surly Frenchwomen choreographing the ridiculous security dance and bovine Poles who didn’t understand the steps, had caused the queue to snake right back to the doors.

  There was something peculiarly passive-aggressive about the worst airport in the world. He could overlook its ugliness – a concrete monstrosity – if the interior functioned. But no, the signs that confidently directed you to the Charles de Gaulle airport train disappeared as you approached. The driverless rapid train wasn’t remotely rapid. And even if you did manage to get to Terminal 2, you then had to walk mile after and mile, only to arrive at 2F and be directed to a bus stop outside.

  ‘Terminal 2G.’ Frank thrust his boarding pass at the uniformed security guard.

  The man sniffed and pointed at the exit with a sign that said NAVETTE.

  ‘Shuttle, monsieur.’

  ‘I don’t travel by bus.’

  The man shrugged and turned away.

  Frank hailed a taxi. It followed the free shuttle bus, driving halfway to Paris before depositing him at the pauper’s terminal: 2G.

  ‘Twenty euros,’ the driver announced. Daylight robbery. Normally he would charge this to Zagrovyl. So long as he had a receipt, what did it matter? Could he justify the meeting with his personal insurance broker as company business? He was only following doctor’s orders, after all.

  Take a trip.

  Past security, the departure lounge was so crowded there was nowhere to sit. Talk about no frills; there wasn’t even a business lounge. He found a spot away from the rabble and checked his phone.

  An update from the insurance company. A concise summary of yesterday’s meeting to discuss his claim. All things considered, the Paris meeting had gone quite well. The French were remarkably sanguine about the loss of an expensive yacht. Gallic shrugs all round. The fact that someone else had been at the helm when it sank didn’t seem to perturb them at all. After all, top businessmen like him were far too busy for the long crossings; they had crew to move the yacht from port to port. Open-sea sailing was boring and dangerous. Ports were where the real action happened, yacht marinas full of beautiful women in search of wealthy men.